Understanding why you need a recruitment marketing strategy will result in a better, more strategically planned campaign, and will put you in prime position when it comes to gaining buy-in and support from your colleagues and managers.

Of course, no two companies will have exactly the same reasons for doing recruitment marketing but here are six that will help to get you started.

Reason 1. Improved employer reputation

Like traditional brand marketing, recruitment marketing is all about reputation.

Perhaps you’ve heard that negative rumors are circulating about the way your people are treated or you’ve seen your competitors boasting about the perks they offer employees.

Whatever is it about your reputation that needs addressing, the rise of online platforms and forums for employees and candidates to share their experience with you means a proactive approach has never been more important or, in fact, easier.

By actively monitoring the way people speak about you, and managing the way you promote your company as an employer, you will quickly see an uptick in the way you are perceived.

Reason 2. Better quality, more strategic hires

Good recruitment marketing is smart and leverages data to create a picture of where the ideal candidates are, what they respond to and where they come from.

If you’re struggling to find the best talent for your business, this data could be a goldmine for you.

Over time, this data becomes increasingly valuable, as you can build a picture of the typical candidate journey and make your recruitment marketing efforts deliver better results, more quickly.

This data can also ensure that you’re not just making great hires now but can align future recruitment efforts with broader business goals, a sure fire way to get the attention of leadership teams.

Reason 3. Improved ROI and measurement

A primary benefit of introducing a recruitment marketing strategy is measurement.

Often, one of the key issues we face is understanding and measuring the outcomes of a recruitment drive, but recruitment marketing will give you the numbers you need to demonstrate success.

One of the best places to start is an audit of the amount of money spend on recruitment and what that equates to in terms of cost per hire. Are you spending a lot of money on resources, paid job ads, agencies to make just one hire?

With a good recruitment marketing campaign, you can ensure that all investments are well spent and deliver better returns in the form of top-quality hires.

Reason 4. Reduced time-to-hire

Traditional, push tactics for talent attraction - such as job ad posting - rely on candidates being in the right place at the right time to come across your opportunity. And of course, they need to be actively looking! All of this can result in a slow and drawn-out recruitment process.

By enabling you to regularly communicate with so-called passive candidates, recruitment marketing will help you build a pool of targeted and engaged individuals. This reduces time spent on initial talent searches and ensures you always have a healthy pipeline of great candidates to contact.

Reason 5. A more positive candidate experience

As with consumer marketing, people will always feel more engaged with a brand if their relationship with them is formed naturally.

If you’re doing things the same way they’ve always been done, the chances are you’re now in the market for a way to improve the experience you offer candidates.

Recruitment marketing strategies make it possible to avoid directly selling your workplace, and enable you to show up in the places that your ideal hires happen to be.

By forming a connection with candidates before they even apply for a role, and then continuing to communicate with them using tailored content and communication at every touchpoint, you will offer every candidate a positive recruitment experience.

Reason 6. Increased workforce diversity

Whether we like to admit or not, unconscious bias is still present in many of the hiring decisions we make. But we all now know that a diverse team is not only fairer but also often more effective.

Recruitment marketing can play a key role in helping businesses to proactively seek a more diverse range of talent, by identifying gaps in hiring and using marketing tactics to get in front of those that are yet to be represented within the workplace.

If you’ve found our advice on why you should be implementing recruitment marketing and how you can do so helpful, you may also be interested in the recent webinar we co-hosted with staffing and recruitment agency, Pivot + Edge, which took a deep dive into the topic of building a strong employer brand.